Team

OFFICE

ANDREW BALSTER

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Andrew is a Chicago-based leader operating in the fields of architecture, urbanism, public policy, sociology, and academia. Working closely with influential leaders in the public and private sector, ranging from architects and planners to government officials and social activists, he creates research platforms with universities to explore many forms of cultural production. In practice, Andrew has worked on projects that are broad in typology and scale - ranging from small civic centers to super-tall towers to entire urban districts. Andrew was a Senior Designer at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in Chicago on several award-winning projects located all over the globe. He received an MScAAD and an MArch w/distinction from the University of Edinburgh in the UK. Andrew joined Archeworks as Executive Director in February 2015.

MONICA CHADHA

STRATEGIC CONSULTANT

Monica Chadha is a licensed architect and educator who has been practicing for over 20 years. Based in Chicago, she is the Founder of Civic Projects LLC, which focuses on the design, construction and development of community driven projects. Combining design with economic drivers such as pop-up retail and business incubation she provides services that encompass a holistic approach to development in underserved neighborhoods. She served as the Founding Director of Impact Detroit. At both Studio Gang Architects and Ross Barney Architects, Monica has been responsible for the design and team leadership of several award-winning buildings. Monica has architecture degrees from the University of Waterloo in Canada and the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has presented her work internationally and has been widely published. In 2010 the Design Futures Council recognized her as an Emerging Leader. www.civic-projects.com

DAVID DEWANE

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY

David is an architect, entrepreneur, journalist, and educator. He maintains an ongoing commitment to design theory and regularly publishes essays and interviews. Recent topics include Anticipatory Design, World Population and Human Values, Spaces of Hyper-Creativity, and Leadership and Creativity. He has been honored as an Emerging Leader by the Design Futures Council and has been certified as an EVOKE Agent by the World Bank Institute.

NILAY MISTRY

PROGRAM STRATEGIST

Nilay is a landscape architect, urban designer and educator. Nilay has executed placemaking projects across the world. His work seeks to expose networks and material flows in the urban landscape. Nilay holds degrees from Harvard Graduate School of Design and University of Illinois and has been visiting faculty at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. His ongoing research has led to numerous community involvement and construction initiatives in the USA, Asia, and Africa. Nilay currently serves as the Program Strategist for Archeworks.

MARIA BERGH

TEACHING FELLOW

Maria holds a BS and Masters of Architecture as well as a Masters of Community Planning from the University of Cincinnati. While a student she worked for ZGF, NBBJ, Anderson Architects, Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders, and the Cincinnati Community Design Center. Upon graduation she became a bcFELLOW at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, and then helped grow the Dallas office of Boulder Associates Architects, a sustainable healthcare design practice. She has been involved in the Open Architecture Collaborative, and is currently helping found JustDesign, an interdisciplinary design cooperative in the public interest. Maria is curious, committed, and creative. She allies herself with the Catholic Worker Movment, and lives and works in Su Casa, a shelter for bilingual families. She loves light, water, hiking, and preparing food from farm to table.

FACULTY

PAOLA AGUIRRE

Paola is founder of Borderless Studio, an urban design practice based in Chicago; she has been trained as an architect and urban designer, and her professional experience includes working with government, universities and architecture/urban design offices both in Mexico and the United States: University of Chicago's Place Lab, City Design Practice at SOM (Chicago), New York University's Office of Strategic Assessment, Planning & Design, and the Municipal Institute of Planning of Chihuahua. Paola's transnational background and strong collaborative approach focus her research and design practice on multidisciplinary exchange and urban systems integration. Paola received her Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard School of Design; she is also founder of The Borderless Workshop, a collaborative platform focused on rethinking the US-Mexico border region.

JULKA ALMQUIST

Julka is a researcher, designer, and trend/futures analyst. Her work has been largely focused on cultural and civic institutions exploring how design and thoughtful visions of the future, can empower individuals and communities. She has worked as a design researcher at IDEO and the Mayo Clinic, and teaches design students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD at the intersection of anthropology and design from the University of California, Irvine.

CHARLES CHAMBERS

A practicing architect in the Midwest, Charles discovers design opportunities in the latent culture of the middle-class. Not one to accept the traditional confines of contemporary academic & professional hierarchies or highbrow rhetoric, Charles’ wide-eyed optimism lies within the creativity of everyday Americans. His career-long thesis aims to run a national workshop to educate micro-regions throughout the country through social & cultural programs, emphasizing the importance of considered design in everyday life, and as a means to institute meaningful community growth. Charles is from CLE, OH.

ODILE COMPAGNON

Odile is an architect and a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She brought to Chicago, 18 years ago, her experience of 15 years, facilitating public workshops, designing public buildings, planning urban developments in Central France. For her, a vital aspect of sustainable design involves weaving a network of knowledge, experience, and connections, so that endeavors in one arena become sources of creative solutions in another. Her work with theaters has permeated her architecture practice, which she sees as a collaborative effort, allowing for many voices to be heard, leaving some space and time for the unpredictable.

KATHERINE DARNSTADT

Architect and educator Katherine Darnstadt is the founder and principal of Latent Design, a collaborative of individuals whose projects focus on social, economic and environmental impact beyond the building. Katherine brings innovative design to those in resource and budget limited environments through a holistic, creative approach to design driven by community needs that leverages other partners and assets to address project challenges. Her passion for public interest design through participatory strategies and diverse background have allowed her to collaborate with change agents in design, science, arts and philosophy. Since founding her practice in 2010, Katherine and her firm have been recognized as an emerging leader in the architecture profession and have been published, exhibited and featured widely, most notably at the International Venice Biennale, Core 77 Design Awards, Architizer A+ Awards, Chicago Ideas Week, NPR, and as the 2013 American Institute of Architects Young Architects Honor Award winner.

PAM DANIELS

Pam is a practicing product designer and an instructor at Northwestern University. Her work experience includes roles as a Director at IDEO, a global design & innovation consultancy, and previously as a Senior Vice President at Starcom MediaVest Group in the media communications field. She has a passion for developing creative leaders of all ages, and inspiring fresh thinking to address problems that matter. She is a founding partner of DesignHouse Chicago, an organization dedicated to growing local manufacturing through design.

NATASHA KROL

Natasha works on increasing economic empowerment through collaborative innovation across sectors. She is the Managing Director of the Stanford College Transition Collaborative. Natasha previously worked at McKinsey and as the Director of Chicago’s Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs, with organizations in the US, Africa, and Asia. Natasha is a Chicago Council on Global Affairs Emerging Leader and was a Chicago Mayoral Fellow. Natasha holds a Bachelors of Arts in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania and a Masters of Architecture from the University of Michigan.

LUIS MONTERRUBIO

Luis works in Chicago’s government in the urban planning public sector focusing on land use, economic development and zoning policies as key elements that shape the fabric and livability of cities. He is a believer in creative interdisciplinary participation as the way to resolve pressing dilemmas like access to transit, housing affordability and employment creation of the urban arena. Luis holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the Universidad Autonomoma Metropolitana in Mexico City and a Masters of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

RYAN PAUL NESTOR

Ryan is the co-founder of Barker Nestor Architecture + Design - a leading hospitality design firm based in Chicago with a 20 year portfolio of hundreds of highly-regarded restaurant, bar, hotel, and entertainment design projects spanning the US. Awarded baccalaureates of architecture and science in environmental design from Ball State University, Ryan later diversified his education at the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology. There, he was a member of both the Law Review and the nationally-recognized Trial Advocacy Team. Ryan sits as a guest jury critic and guest lectures at numerous Chicago area universities, and is a Visiting Instructor at TU Delft in the Netherlands.

CASEY RENNER

Casey is a registered architect with professional experience ranging from supertall towers in the Middle East and China to kinetic art installations and academic publications. In a similar wide spectrum, his inspiration can be found somewhere between computational geometry and Brutalism. He received his M.Arch from MIT, and is currently a Senior Associate with HOK in Chicago and Adjunct Professor with the Chicago Studio for Virginia Tech. Previously he worked as a designer with VJAA in Minneapolis, Howeler + Yoon in Boston, and as an Associate and Senior Designer at SOM in Chicago.

DAWVEED SCULLY

Dawveed Scully is a Senior Urban Designer at SOM in Chicago. While his background is in architecture he has experience on the Urban Scale projects working on everything from campus scale projects to new cities around the globe. In recent years as a member of SOM city design practice he has developed a focus on the revitalization of the American city, working on a variety of projects on the south side of Chicago and most recently a project in Detroit’s East Riverfront looking at similar issues of how to engage underserved/undervalued communities with strategies and tactics to catalyze equitable development in the future.

TIM SWANSON

Tim is an innovative designer, urban strategist and thought leader whose international portfolio of work explores the specificity of place and the prospect inherent in culture. He frequently lectures on topics ranging from demographic shifts and new community typologies to aligned urban mobility systems. He is part of the United Nations Habitat’s Placemaking Leadership Council, the Chicago Loop Alliance Placemaking Committee and is a former adjunct lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy and Principal Mentor for the IIC Fellowship program, both at the University of Chicago. Tim is currently the Practice Leader at CannonDesign in Chicago.

XAVIER WRONA

Xavier is the founder of the architecture office Est-ce ainsi, a structure working to refocus the architectural practice on its political consequences and its possible participation in the reform of “vivre ensemble.” Est-ce ainsi articulates a critical reading of the figure of the architect throughout history to the production of inordinately minimum architectures with a particular attention to the means of production of the built environment. Xavier is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris La Villette and of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. He taught from 2002-2010 for the Franco-American studio for the Georgia Tech Paris Program at the ENSAPLV in Paris, at the ENSAPBX in Bordeaux and is now associate professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Saint-Etienne, France. Est-ce ainsi was awarded the Young Architects and Landscape Architects prize by the french Ministry of Culture in 2010. http://www.estceainsi.net/